A transcript of my jetlagged, over caffeinated slightly unhinged interview with Ann Giles the irrepressible "Book Witch", here. Photographs courtesy of Junior Witch in the really rather lovely Wellcome Institute cafe somewhere near Euston Station.
An interview with the charming Kate Evans of ABC Radio National here. This talk ranges pretty wildly too; interestingly I had a bit of a whinge with Kate off air about the musical cliches they always play when Irish people are being interviewed about any subject so Kate went above and beyond the call of duty and found some fantastic musical cues that are appropriate to the book and the conversation. You can also listen to this interview live on ABC Radio National or on their itunes podcast.
18 comments:
Musical cliches, you say? It's fortunate, perhaps, that bodhrán is pronounced something like bore on.
I know the Wellcome Institute - just opposite Euston - great cafe. Your photo was taken there wasn't it? I really want to see the free!! exhibition on Death (the one on Dirt was fantastic) - did you see it (Death or Dirt)??
I will be in London for a Society of Antiquaries meeting and then a conference in 2 weeks - can't wait.
Will listen to your interviews now (I am just in from work..)
Peter
I like trad. music but I'm not one for the cliches. I once saw a piece on Kafka where they played klezmer in the background.
Deb
Alas I didnt get to see much beyond the cafe, but it looked like a fantastic place. And yeah Death was the big exhibit.
I've enjoyed all the interviews I've listened to around this book, but bookwitch herself is kind of a one off, so do check out this so far unique conversation between two of my favorite bloggers if you haven't already.
I don't know; maybe klezmer was what all insurance clerks and investigators listened to in Prague.
On a side note, Adrian, I read an interview with Brian Cox recently, where he said he was fed up with what he saw as elitism in the British film and television industry. He said he and other blue-collar actors like Albert Finney and Alan Bates would have a tougher time breaking through these days, where actors like Damien Lewis and Benedict Cumberbatch have a real advantage. A pipeline from public schools to the NSC, he seemed to be saying.
Seana
Thanks for the encouragement...
Peter
Perhaps...
Matt
I think Cox is right. Very very few blue collar actors ever make it into the big quality productions in British TV and film. Its always the Cumberbatches and Damien Lewises and Daniel Day Lewises...I was pretty surprised when I saw the actress who plays Ygritte on Game of Thrones being interviewed and she had this Sloane Ranger Princess Diana accent. I thought they had deliberately cast working clas people from Lancashire and Yorkshire to play the northerners but actually of course they cast people from the elite London drama schools who could do passable working class northern accents.
Its stunning how class riddled England is to the present day. 5% of the population goes to private/boarding schools yet they dominate entire professions: acting, theatre, the city, law, the BBC and other media etc. They're not more competent or better than people who went to comprehensive schools but crucially they have the right accents and the connections...
Matt
And of course America is only a little better: for every Jay Z making it from the streets there's a cast of Girls or a Gwyneth Paltrow who made it through connections...
I was watching a clip of Martin Amis talking about Kingsley last night. I haven't read him or seen him before, but know him only by reputation. He actually came across a bit better than I would have thought, but there is this odd sense you get when you listen to really toney Brits, which is that they are so poised, so cultured and precise in their articulation of their thoughts that they actually stand at a bit of remove from their own experience. So for instance he would say that he had cried buckets while writing about his father, there was no indication that he had ever even shed a tear in presentation of himself. It is a very guarded way to present yourself to the world, I think.
Zadie Smith must have been a wonder to have broken through.
Seana
Well its no surprise that Zadie Smith broke through because she's so funny and talented...
But I'll bet there are writers/comedians/actors out there just as good as the ones offered to us by the British establisment as icons but who will never make it because they dont have the right accent, class and connections.
Every week I listen to this film review show on BBC 5 with Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode, both of whom needless to say, went to private school. Every week Mark encourages his audience to say hello to Jason Isaacs an actor that Mark went to school with. And of course Kermode always reviews positively the movies of his old school chum. This kind of thing at lesser or greater degrees happens all the time. Its not that Isaacs isnt a good actor - he's perfectly adequate - its the actors who get excluded from this conversation or praise because they didnt go to the right school...
He is also very physically appealing, which doesn't hurt, but I think you're right, because he is a fairly affectless guy for an actor, at least in the things I've seen him in. Oh, wait--the exception was when he played Captain Hook. So I may be wrong about his range.
Thank you all!
It was a Monday, so Death was off.
Hi Adrian. I really enjoyed your Dead Series although I was a bit unhappy with the way it ended. . . Nevertheless, I loved Fifty Grand, the tension, suspense, dialogue etc. I hope to write something even as half as good as that and I'd like to know what inspires you to write. Do you watch movies, read more books ? How and why?
Michel Ivan
Michel
Thanks for the kind words.
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